Musharraf's man... for now

Kayani may be seen as a gentleman soldier, but history shows that Army Chiefs are often their own men

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Hasan Zaidi

November 29, 2007

ISSUE DATE: December 10, 2007

UPDATED: December 3, 2007 12:07 IST

General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who became Pakistan’s 14th army chief on November 28, shares more than a name with his former—and current— boss, Pervez Musharraf.

Considered to be “liberal” in his social views, he is also known to be close to Washington, which is apparently satisfied that he is “fully committed” to pursuing its ‘war on terror’.

A close confidant of the president, Kayani’s appointment by Musharraf as his successor to the all-important post of Chief of Army Staff is indicative also of the trust the now-civilian president places in his loyalty.

When Musharraf appointed him Vice-Chief of Army Staff in October— the first solid indication that the general-President was planning to take off his uniform—he made it a point to tell the press, “Kayani and I have complete identity of views.”

Widely respected for his professional and intellectual abilities, 55-year-old Kayani—who hails from the ‘soldiering belt’ of the Potohar plateau in Punjab—has also earned the admiration of the army’s rank and file because of his humble roots and his gentlemanly conduct.

The son of a naib subedar—a non-commissioned officer—and the eldest of four brothers, he is known to have shouldered the burden of supporting his large family when his father passed away while he was still a cadet.

Change of guard in Pakistan

In 2006, he refused to oblige his first cousin—a retired major— when the latter wanted his help to run for a coveted local body post in Rawalpindi. And he was the only serving intelligence chief who did not submit an affidavit against deposed chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry when Musharraf moved to oust the chief justice on March 9.

General Kayani was the Director-General of Military Operations during the tense border stand-off between India and Pakistan in 2002, during which time he is credited with spending many sleepless nights taking care of military preparedness.

But his real rise to the lofty heights of influence came while he was serving as the Rawalpindi Corps Commander— the most sensitive field posting because of its proximity to the power centre in Islamabad.

After Musharraf survived two deadly assassination attempts in December 2003, he put Kayani in charge of the investigations. Within the space of a couple of months, Kayani broke into the assassins’ network—which included military personnel—and arrested the plotters.

General Musharraf was so impressed with his efficiency and skill that he mentioned it in his autobiography In the Line of Fire. “When Kayani got tough, the problems of coordination disappeared and the agencies started working like a well-oiled machine,” Musharraf recalled in the book.

That was Kayani's ticket to be appointed the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s most influential spy agency. Western diplomats are all praise for his work as the head of ISI, which saw the arrest of the Al Qaeda pointman in Pakistan Abu Farraj Al-Libbi, one of the main plotters of the assassination attempts against Musharraf.

“He also managed to break many of the agency’s old bonds with the Taliban, which was important in orienting it for the war against extremism in the north,” says a Western diplomat based in Islamabad.

However, Kayani’s tenure at the helm of ISI was not all roses. It was during his stint there that the military operation in Pakistan’s tribal areas— in particular, Waziristan —floundered badly and militant extremists made inroads into ‘settled’ areas such as Swat.

His tenure also saw the unfolding of the well-armed resistance—and its bloody end—from within the Lal Masjid in the heart of Islamabad as well as the subsequent proliferation of suicide bombings throughout Pakistan, many targeting the army itself.

While ISI alone cannot be held accountable for these events—in many cases operational control was in other hands and there were a number of factors involved—but they do raise a number of questions about the lapses in intelligence gathering.

Nevertheless, Kayani had earned enough of Musharraf’s trust that when the President went to negotiate a deal face-to-face with Benazir Bhutto earlier this year, the former ISI chief was the only significant serving military officer to accompany him.

Kayani has generally kept himself above the fray of politics but it was obvious that his former cordial relations with Benazir—he served as her deputy military secretary during her second tenure as prime minister—played a part in his being chosen to be privy to a secret negotiation.

It is speculated that Benazir—who wanted the next army chief to be appointed with her consent—had also expressed confidence in Musharraf’s choice of Kayani for the post.

Remarkably, the soft-spoken Kayani remains a non-controversial figure for all political parties. Part of the reason for this is not only everyone’s belief in his competence, but his steadfast refusal to deviate from a policy of not giving statements on matters outside his professional duties.

The most that people know about him is that aside from being a heavy smoker and a keen golfer, he usually keeps his views to himself. “He is an extremely good listener,” says a journalist who has attended briefings given by Kayani. “He keeps jotting things down on a pad he carries with him and speaks very little.”

It is also quite obvious that Kayani enjoys the support of the Americans. The general is a graduate of the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and his work as ISI chief put him in constant touch with his counterparts in the US military establishment.

The Pentagon obviously is confident that it knows him fairly well. When US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte visited Pakistan two weeks ago, he met Musharraf once but Kayani, then still vice-chief, twice. Kayani’s first task as head of the army may be to stamp his own authority on it and to rebuild its sagging morale, pulled down by rising extremist violence and popular opposition to military rule.

He will also have to balance the imperatives of Pakistan’s alliance with the US against his countrymen’s disaffection with it. Kayani is the first army chief since 1969 to continue to serve under his old boss – Generals Musa Khan and Yahya Khan had served under ‘Field Marshal’ Ayub Khan during the latter’s rule from 1958-69. But loyalties to benefactors aside, Pakistani history has shown that an army chief is often his own man.

Many see Kayani as a tougher version of Jahangir Karamat— the former army chief forced to resign by prime minister Nawaz Sharif in 1998—who also carried the reputation of having a sound intellectual base, as well as being a gentleman soldier.

In the rough and tumble of Pakistani politics, where the army chief becomes the centre of gravity for all the wrong reasons, General Kayani may need all the toughness he can muster to resist the temptations that will inevitably come his way.